The Editor at Large for the Wall Street Journal, Gerry Baker, says: ‘We’ve been “gaslit’ and deceived” – for years – “all in the name of ‘democracy’”. That deceit “collapsed” with the Presidential debate, Thursday’.
“Until the world saw the truth … [against] the ‘misinformation’ … the fiction of Mr. Biden’s competence … suggests they [the Democrats] evidently thought they could get away with promoting it. [Yet] by perpetuating that fiction they were also revealing their contempt for the voters and for democracy itself”.
Baker continues:
“Biden succeeded because he made toeing the party line his life’s work. Like all politicians whose egos dwarf their talents, he ascended the greasy pole by slavishly following his party wherever it led … Finally—in the ultimate act of partisan servility, he became Barack Obama’s vice president, the summit of achievement for those incapable, yet loyal: the apex position for the consummate ‘yes man’”.
“But then, just as he was ready to drift into a comfortable and well-deserved obscurity, his party needed a front man … They sought a loyal and reliable figurehead, a flag of convenience, under which they could sail the progressive vessel into the deepest reaches of American life — on a mission to advance statism, climate extremism and self-lacerating wokery. There was no more loyal and convenient vehicle than Joe”.
If so, then who actually has been ‘pulling America’s strings’ these past years?
“You [the Democratic machine] don’t get to deceive, dissemble and gaslight us for years about how this man was both brilliantly competent at the job and a healing force for national unity – and now tell us, when your deception is uncovered, that it’s ‘bedtime for Bonzo’ – thanks for your service, and let’s move on”, Baker warns.
“[Now] it is going horribly wrong. Much of his party has no use for him anymore … in a remarkably cynical act of bait-and-switch, [they are trying to] swap him out for someone more useful to their cause. Part of me thinks they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. I find myself in the odd position of wanting to root for poor mumbling Joe … It’s tempting to say to the Democratic machine frantically mobilizing against him: You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to deceive, dissemble and gaslight us for years”.
Something significant has snapped within ‘the system’. It is always tempting to situate such events in ‘immediate time’, but even Baker seems to allude to a longer cycle of gaslighting and deception – one that only now has suddenly burst into open view.
Such events – though seemingly ephemeral and of the moment – can be portents to deeper structural contradictions moving.